


Tacitus

by madasthesea



Series: Fure [2]
Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 13:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4480283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madasthesea/pseuds/madasthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has returned the Thief to his queen; she visits his cell anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tacitus

The cells were silent. The cells were usually silent, but the gasping breaths and stifled whimpers that had echoed dully for the past nights now seemed to her more natural.

The Thief was being returned to his kind queen. The envoy had left this morning. And yet the Queen found she could not sleep. She had spent the past weeks wandering the castle halls in the dark, always finding her way back to this dank corridor next to an iron gate. Unconsciously, she had inherited the Thief’s affinity for night.

_Oxe Harbrea Sacrus Vax Dragga…_

The words floated back to her as if he was sobbing them on the other side of the bars. She wanted to know what they meant, desperately wanted to ask anyone who might understand them, but didn't dare to do so. Sometimes, when she woke up gasping for breath, crying for the boy in her dungeon, she found herself whispering them, not in repetition, but in prayer.

Eugenides, she was loathe to think his name, prayed often. It was something she hated about him. He had trusted in the gods and they had betrayed him to her, told her everything she needed to do to destroy him and his mountain country,and as if his missing hand had not been enough, as if he had not already sacrificed everything to those indifferent gods, _he still prayed to them_.

As had so often happened before, she felt bile rise in her throat as she thought about the bloody stump of his arm. She had caused that. She had done that to him and watching him beg had been vindicating and  exhilarating. And then she had walked to her rooms and torn off her dress, the embroidered leaves forever blood-stained, with her own hands before curling under her covers like a child hiding from the wrath of their parents. She had not cried then. She had told herself that she did not cry for her father, or herself, and she would not cry for a thief who insulted and mocked her.

She cried that night. And most nights since.

The silence pressed against her ears like a vice. Something needed to break it, she needed to feel the pressure of it snap off of her. She wanted the sound of soft-soled leather boots scuffing against stone behind her, an accented voice to speak to her, she wanted a sly smile stealing over a boyish face--

She yelled, short and rough, slamming her hand against the bars of the cell that no matter the time that passed, no matter what other occupants, would always be _his_ cell.

“My Queen,” came a voice behind her. She closed her eyes, furious at being caught behaving with such a lack of control.

“Relius,” she said, turning with her chin high, the stone-faced queen she always was.

“You should sleep,” he suggested. She nodded and moved past him.

Just as she passed his shoulder, he spoke again, hesitantly, “My Queen, the thief…”

“I should have killed him,” she interrupted. Then she left the dungeons, hiding her swelling hand in the folds of her dress.


End file.
